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THE MENACE 



OF A 



PREMATURE PEACE 



oAN qADDRESS 

BY 

William Howard Taft 

w 
Former President of the United States 

Delivered at 

MONTREAL, CANADA 



September Twenty-sixth 
Nineteen Hundred and Seventeen 



Published by the 

LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE 

70 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 





TRANSFERRED FEOM 






I] 6 13 



THE MENACE OF A PREMATURE PEACE 

By William Howard Taft 



ENGLAND, France, Russia, Italy, and now the United States, as 
allies, are engaged in the greatest war of history to secure 
permanent world peace. With twenty or more millions of men 
at the colors, with the losses in dead, wounded and captured of more 
than twenty-five per cent., with debts piling mountain-high and reaching 
many, many billions, they are fighting for a definite purpose, and that 
is the defeat of German militarism. If the Prussian military caste 
retains its power to control the military and foreign policy of Germany 
after the war, peace will not be permanent, and war will begin again 
when the chauvinistic advisors of the Hohenzollern dynasty deem a 
conquest and victory possible. 

The Allies have made a stupendous effort and have strained their 
utmost capacity. Unready for the war, they have concentrated their 
energy in preparation. In this important respect they have defeated 
the plan of Germany "in shining armor" to crush her enemies in their 
unreadiness. 

But the war has not been won. Germany is in possession of 
Belgium and part of northern France. She holds Servia and Roumania, 
Poland and the Baltic Provinces of Russia. Peace now, even though 
it be made on the basis of the restoration of the status quo, "without 
indemnities and without annexations," would be a failure to achieve the 
great purpose for which the Allies have made heartrending sacrifice. 
Armaments would continue for the next war, and this war would have 
been fought in vain. The millions of lives lost and the hundreds of 
billions' worth of the product of men's labor, would be wasted. 

He who proposes peace now, therefore, either does not see the 
stake for which the Allies are fighting, or wishes the German military 
autocracy still to control the destinies of all of us as to peace or war. 
Those who favor permanent world peace must oppose with might and 
main the proposals for peace at this juncture in the war, whether made 
in socialistic councils, in pro-German conferences, or by Pope Benedict. 



4 The Menace of a Premature Peace 

That the Pontiff of the greatest Christian Church should wish to bring 
to an end a war in which millions of its communion are on both sides, 
is to be expected. That he should preserve a difficult neutrality is also 
natural. That his high purpose is to save the world from further 
suffering goes without saying. But the present is not the opportunity 
of an intervening peacemaker who must assume that compromise is 
possible. 

The Allies are fighting for a principle the mainte- 

NO TIME FOR , ... , ~ . + t_ r + r - . ... .. 

„ ^ m »»„ T , nance of which affects the future of civilization. 

COMPROMISE . 

If they do not achieve it they have sacrificed 

the flower of their youth and mortgaged their future for a century, and 
all for nothing. This is not a war in which the stake is territory or 
the sphere of influence of one nation over another. The Allies cannot 
concede peace until they conquer it. When they do so, it will be 
permanent. Otherwise they fail. 

There are wars like that between Japan and Russia, in which 
President Roosevelt properly and successfully intervened to bring about 
a peace that helped the parties to a settlement. The principle at stake 
and the power and territory were of such a character that a settlement 
might be made substantially permanent. But the present issue is like 
that in our Civil War, which was whether the Union was to be preserved 
and the cancer of slavery was to be cut out. Peace proposals to 
President Lincoln were quite as numerous as those of to-day, and were 
moved by quite as high motives. But there was no compromise possi- 
ble. Either slavery and disunion lost or won. So to-day the great moral 
object of the war must be achieved or defeated. 

An organization of citizens in the United States, 

T U 17 I CA/^IT17 Trf"! 

„,„,„„ known as the League to Enforce Peace, has been 

ENFORCE PEACE . & . '. 

active for two years past in promoting its propa- 
ganda. There is a similar association in England. In that League are 
many persons who for years urged the settlement of all international 
controversies by arbitration or judicial decision. The vortex of death 
and destruction for the peoples of the world, which the breaking out of 
the war portended, roused these peace lovers and promoters to devise 
a plan for avoiding war after this should end. 

The plan is a simple one. It looks to a league of all nations 
in which all agree, first, that legal international controversies shall be 
heard and decided by a Court; second, that controversies not to be 
settled on principles of law shall be submitted to a Commission of 



The Menace of a Premature Peace 5 

Conciliation for recommendation of a settlement ; third, that the united 
forces of the nations of the League shall resist any nation beginning 
war before the quarrel has been submitted to one tribunal or the other, 
and been decided. The American League has not thought it wise to 
attempt to enforce the judgment or the settlement recommended. Its 
scheme is only to restrain the contending parties from resorting to 
war until after the peaceable procedure has been had and the decision 
rendered. The promoters of the League believe that the delay and 
deliberation arising from this enforced peaceable procedure before a 
war can be begun will prevent most wars, and that it is wiser not to 
attempt too much, lest the nations decline to restrain their freedom 
of action so much. The English plan is more ambitious in providing 
that if the council of nations so decide they must enforce the judgment 
or settlement. 

Whatever the detailed stipulations of such a league, however, its 
operation and success must depend on the obligations of the treaty 
stipulations. Unless their binding effect is recognized by the nations 
as a sacred principle, the stipulations of the league will be "writ in 
water." The revelations and disclosures of this war will satisfy the 
members of the league that as long as the present military caste 
controls the German military and foreign policy, the league is im- 
practicable, and would not be worth the parchment on which its 
obligations would be recorded. Why have they reached this conclusion? 
Why, as citizens of the United States, and as citizens of the world 
anxious to promote peace, do they feel that any proposal of peace in 
the present situation would defeat permanent world peace, and should 
be opposed by them with all the energy they can command? The 
answer to this question must be found in the causes of this war and 
the revelations it has made of Germany's purpose, stripped of confusing 
pretence and naked for the whole world to see. 

Germany was long divided into little states, kingdoms, duchies 
and other forms of one-man rule. She was the prey of political 
intrigue and manipulation of other powers. All her well-wishers hoped 
for and looked forward to her union. The Germans of yore had loved 
freedom. We Anglo-Saxons were Germans once and our representa- 
tive system can be traced back to institutions found first in the forests 
of Germany. In the wars of the first Napoleon, Prussia and other 
German states were subjected to a great humiliation. But the German 
youth rebelled, organized themselves into military reserves, and finally 
contributed much to the defeat of the man whose lust for universal 
power finds its counterpart in the aim of the Hohenzollerns of today. 



6 The Menace op a Premature Peace 

The Holy Alliance, retaining the principle of the divine right of kings, 
and supporting it in all of Germany, left no opportunity for the free 
exercise of political power by these liberty-loving German youth. In 
1848, democratic revolutions occurred throughout Germany and in 
Austria, but they were overcome. Many of the leaders came to the 
United States and with their followers became our best adopted citizens. 
When our Civil War came on, their hatred of slavery led them to 
volunteer for their adopted country, and every battlefield of the war 
was wet with German blood. 

In Germany itself, however, the liberal element was 
THE GERMAN nQt a n owe( i to work out its hopes. It had looked 
MILITARISTIC . x , , ... , ~ ... . 

POI ICY a umte( i an d liberal Germany with a government 

based on the representative system. It was not 
to be. Under the first William with his Prime Minister Bismarck, who 
came to power in 1862, a definite plan was adopted of perfecting the 
already well-disciplined Prussian army so that by "blood and iron" 
the unity of Germany should be achieved. The whole Prussian nation 
was made into an army, and it soon became a machine with a power of 
conquest equaled by no other. The cynical, unscrupulous, but effective, 
diplomacy of Bismarck first united Prussia with Austria to deprive 
Denmark of Schleswig-Holstein by force, then secured a quarrel with 
Austria over the spoils, and deprived her of all influence over the 
German states by humiliating defeat in the six weeks war of 1866. 
After this war, several German states were annexed forcibly to Prussia 
and offensive and defensive alliances were made with others. 

Then in 1870 the occasion was seized, when it was known that 
France was not prepared, to strike at her. France was beaten, and 
Alsace and Lorraine were taken from her. The German Empire was 
established with a Prussian King at its head. France was made to 
pay an indemnity of one billion dollars, with which the military machine 
of Germany was strengthened and improved. The/i Germany settled 
down to a period of peace to digest the territory which by these three 
wars had been absorbed. Bismarck's purpose in maintaining the 
superiority of his army was to retain what had been taken by blood 
and iron, and at the same time by a period of prolonged peace to give 
to Germany a full opportunity for industrial development and the self- 
discipline necessary for the highest efficiency. 

The marvelous work which the Germans have accomplished in 
their field of industrial activity is known to all. The prosperity which 
followed increased the population of Germany and crowded her borders. 



The Menace of a Premature Peace 7 

Bismarck was dismissed by the present Emperor, but his policy of 
maintaining the highest efficiency of the army was continued. And 
then, as the success of the German system in the material development 
of the Empire showed itself and became the admiration of the world, 
the destiny of Germany grew larger in the eyes of her Emperor and 
her people, and the blood and iron policy which had been directed first 
to the achievement of the unity of Germany and then to the defense 
of the German Empire in the enjoyment of what had been taken in 
previous wars, expanded into a dream of Germanizing the world. The 
German people were impregnated with this idea by every method of 
official instruction. A cult of philosophy to spread the propaganda 
developed itself in the universities and schools. The principle was that 
the state could do no wrong, that the state was an entity that must be 
sustained by force ; that everything else must be sacrificed to its 
strength ; that the only sin the state could commit was neglect and 
failure to maintain its power. 

With that dogmatic logic which pleases the German mind, and 
to which it readily adapts itself, this proposition easily led into the 
further conclusion that there could be no international morality ; that 
morality and its principles applied only to individuals, but that when 
the action of the state was involved, considerations of honor, of the 
preservation of obligations solemnly made, must yield if the interests 
of the state required. These were the principles taught by Treitschke 
in the University of Berlin and maintained by German economic 
philosophers and by the representative of the military regime in 
Bernhardi. 

Bismarck had been keen enough in his diplomacy to await 
the opportunity that events presented for seeming to be 
forced into a war which he had long planned. This was the case with 
Denmark. This was the case with Austria. This was the case with 
France. German diplomacy has lost nothing of this characteristic in 
the present war. Germany did not plan the killing of the Austrian 
Archduke and his consort, but the minute that that presented the 
likelihood of war, Germany accepted it as the opportunity for her to 
strike down her neighbors, Russia and France, and to enlarge her 
power. She gladly gave her consent to the ultimatum of Austria to 
Servia that was sure to bring on war, and then posed as one driven into 
war by the mobilization of Russia. 

She knew that Russia was utterly unprepared. She knew that 
France was unprepared. She knew that Great Britain was unprepared. 



8 The Menace of a Premature Peace 

She herself was ready to the last cannon and the last reservist. There- 
fore, when appealed to by Great Britain and by all the other Powers 
to intervene and prevent Austria from forcing a universal war, Germany 
declined to act. Not a telegram or communication between Germany 
and Austria has ever been given to the public to show the slightest 
effort to induce delay by Austria. While Germany would pose as having 
acted only as Austria's ally and as unwilling to influence her against her 
interest and independent judgment, the verdict of history unquestion- 
ably will be that the war is due to Germany's failure to prevent it and 
to her desire to accept the opportunity of the assassination of the 
Austrian Archduke as a convenient time to begin a war she long in- 
tended. The revelation of their unpreparedness is sufficient to show that 
England, France and Russia did not conspire to bring the war on. On 
the other hand, before the war began Germany had constructed a com- 
plete system of strategic railways on her Belgian border, adapted not 
to commercial uses, but only to the quick invasion of Belgium. 

Indeed, every fact as the war has developed 
A CLEAR CASE ( . . .. . t \, 

...,„„ „-„«- ».,», forms one more circumstance in the irrefragable 
AGAINST GERMANY & 

case against Germany as the Power responsible 

for this world disaster. The preparation of fifty years, the false 
philosophy of her destiny and of the exaltation of force, had given her 
a yearning for conquest, for the expansion of her territory, the exten- 
sion of her influence, and the Germanization of the world. She alone 
is responsible for the incalculable destruction of this war. She led on 
in the armament of the world that she might rule it. She promoted 
therefore the armament of other nations. Her system was followed, 
though not as effectively, by other countries in pure defense of their 
peace and safety. 

And now her Emperor, her Prussian military caste, and her 
wonderful but blinded people, have the blood of the millions who have 
suffered in this world catastrophe on their hands. The German military 
doctrine, that when the interests of the state are concerned, the question 
is one of power and force, and not of honor or obligation or moral 
restraint, finds its most flagrant examples in Germany's conduct of 
this war. 

Her breach of a solemn obligation entered into by her and all the 
powers of Europe, in respect to Belgium's neutrality, was its first 
exhibition. It was followed by the well proven, deliberate plan of 
atrocities against the men, women and children of a part of Belgium 
in order to terrorize the rest of the population into complete submission. 



The Menace of a Premature Peace 9 

It was shown in the prompt dropping of bombs on defenceless towns 
from Zeppelins and other aircraft ; in the killing of non-combatant 
men, women and children by the naval bombardment of unfortified 
towns ; in the use of liquid fire and poison gases in battle. All of 
these had been condemned as improper in declarations in the Hague 
treaties. 

^T- n ..mT The Reptile Fund, which was used under Bismarck for the 

GERMAN fc r 

INTRIGUE bribery of the press and for the maintenance of a spy 

system, has been enlarged and elaborated, so that German 
bribery has extended the world over, and the German espionage has 
exceeded anything known to history. The medieval use by the Hohen- 
zollerns of dynastic kinship has paralyzed the action of the peoples of 
Greece and Russia. And now we know by recent revelation, of the aid 
that Swedish diplomats are furnishing to Germany in her submarine 
warfare against neutral ships, and that it is made possible by the in- 
fluence of the German consort of the Swedish King. 

Intrigue, dishonor, cruelty, have characterized the entire military 
policy of Germany. The rules of international law have been cast 
to the winds. The murderous submarine has sunk without warning 
the non-combatant commercial vessels of the enemy and sent their 
officers, their crews and their passengers, men, women and children, 
to the bottom without warning. Not only has this policy been pursued 
against enemy commercial vessels, but also against neutral commercial 
vessels, and parts of the crew have been assembled on the submarines 
and then the submarine has been submerged and the victims left strug- 
gling in the ocean's waste to drown. We find a German diplomat 
telegraphing from a neutral port to the German headquarters advising 
that if the submarine be used against the vessels of that neutral power 
it leave no trace of the attack. In other words, the murder of the crews 
must be complete, because "dead men tell no tales." 

Having violated the neutrality of Belgium, having broken its 
sacred obligations to that country and her people, it is now enslaving 
them by taking them from Belgium and enforcing their labor in 
Germany. This is contrary to every rule of international law, and is in 
the teeth of the plainest principles of justice and honor. All these 
things are done for the state. It is not that the nature of the German 
people generally is cruel — that is not the case. But the minds of the 
German people have been poisoned with this false philosophy; and the 
ruling caste in Germany, in its desperate desire to win, has allowed no 
consideration of humanity or decency or honor to prevent its use of 



10 The Menace of a Premature Peace 

any means which in any way could by hook or crook accomplish a 
military purpose. 

When the war began, Germany was able to convince her people 
and to convince many in the world that the issue in the war was not 
the exaltation of the military power of Germany and the expansion of 
her plan of destiny, but that it was a mere controversy between the 
Teuton and the Slav, and Germany asked with great plausibility, "Will 
you have the world controlled by the Slav or by the German?" Those 
who insisted that the issue was one of militarism against the peace 
of the world, of democracy against military autocracy, of freedom 
against military tyranny, were met with the argument, ''Russia is an 
ally. She is a greater despotism and a greater military autocracy 
than Germany." As the war wore on, the real issue was cleared of 
this confusion. Russia became a democracy. The fight was between 
governments directed by their people on the one hand, and the military 
dynasties of Germany, Austria, and Turkey, on the other. 

Tur DiiDD^cE President Wilson says the Allies are fighting to make 
THE PURPOSE , , . . . , _ 

OF THE WAR * e wor ^ sa * e * or democracy. Some misconception 
has been created on this head. The Allies are not 
struggling to force a particular form of government on Germany. If 
the German people continue to wish an Emperor it is not the purpose 
of the Allies to require them to have a republic. Their purpose is to 
end the military policy and foreign policy of Germany that looks to 
the maintenance of a military and naval machine, with its hair-trigger 
preparation for use against her neighbors. If this continues, it will 
entail on every democratic government the duty of maintaining a similar 
armament in self-defense, or, what is more likely, the duty will be 
wholly or partly neglected. Thus the policy of Germany, with her 
purpose and destiny, will threaten every democracy. This is the con- 
dition which it is the determined purpose of the Allies, as interpreted 
by President Wilson, to change. 

How is the change to be effected? By defeating Germany in 
this war. The German people have been very loyal to their Emperor, 
because his leadership accords with the false philosophy of the state 
and German destiny, with which they have been indoctrinated and 
poisoned. A defeat of the military machine, a defeat of the Franken- 
stein of the military dynasty to which they have been sacrificed, must 
open their eyes to the hideous futility of their political course. The 
German Government will then be changed as its people will have it 



The Menace of a Premature Peace 11 

changed, to avoid a recurrence of such a tragedy as they have deliber- 
ately prepared for themselves. 

Men who see clearly the kind of peace which we must have, in 
order to be a real and lasting peace, can have no sympathy therefore 
with a patched-up peace, one made at a council table, the result of 
diplomatic chaffering and bargaining. Men who look forward to a 
League of the World to Enforce Peace in the future can have no 
patience with a compromise that leaves the promoting cause of the 
present awful war unaffected and unremoved. This war is now being 
fought by the Allies as a League to Enforce Peace. Unless they com- 
pel it by victory, they do not enforce it. They do not make the 
military autocracies of the world into nations fit for a World League, 
unless they convince them by a lesson of defeat. 

...^~.~..„ ~ And now what of the United States? When 

AMERICA S PART 

the war came on, there were a few in the 

United States who felt that the invasion of Belgium required a protest 
on the part of our government, and some indeed who felt that we 
should join in the war at once. But the great body of the American 
people, influenced by our traditional policy of avoiding European 
quarrels, stood by the Administration in desiring to maintain a strict 
neutrality. I think it is not unfair to say that a very large proportion 
of the intelligent and thinking people of the United States — and that 
means a great majority — sympathized with the Allies in the struggle 
which they were making. But many with us of German descent, 
prompted by a pride in the notable advance in the world of German 
enterprise, German ingenuity, German discipline, German efficiency, 
and regarding the struggle as an issue between Teuton and Slav, 
extended their sympathy to their Fatherland. 

As conscientiously as possible, the Administration and the country 
pursued the course laid down by international law as that which a 
neutral should take. International law is the rule of conduct of nations 
toward one another, accepted and acquiesced in by all nations. It is 
not always as definite as one would like, and the asquiescence of all 
nations is not always as clearly established as it ought to be. But in 
the law of war as to capture at sea of commercial vessels, the principles 
have been established clearly by the decision of prize courts of all 
nations, English, American, Prussian and French. The right of non- 
combatants on commercial vessels, officers, crew and passengers, either 
enemy or neutral, to be secure from danger of life, has always been 
recognized and never contested. Nevertheless, Germany sank, without 



12 The Menace of a Premature Peace 

warning, 150 American citizens, men, women and children, and sent 
them to their death by a submarine torpedo, simply because they 
happened to be on English or American commercial vessels. We pro- 
tested and Germany halted for a time. We thought that if we condoned 
the death of 150 we might still maintain peace with that Power. 

But it was not to be, and after more than a year Germany 
announced her purpose to resume this murderous and illegal course 
toward innocent Americans. Had we hesitated, we would have lost 
our independence as a people. We would have subscribed abjectly to 
the doctrine that might makes right. Germany left no door open to 
us as a self-respecting nation except that which led to war. She 
deliberately forced us into the ranks of her enemies, and she did it 
because she was obsessed with the belief that the submarine was the 
instrument of destruction by which she might win the war. She 
recked not that as she used it, it was a weapon of murder of innocents. 
Making military efficiency her god, and exalting the appliances of 
science in the killing of men, she ignored all other consequences. 

Germany's use of the submarine brought us into the war. But 
being in, we recognized as fully as any of our Allies do that its far 
greater issue is whether German militarism shall continue after this war 
to be a threat to the peace of the world, or whether we shall end that 
threat by this struggle in which we are to spend our life's blood. We 
must not therefore be turned from the stern necessity of winning 
this war. 



THE MORAL 
ISSUE 



When the war began and its horrible character was 
soon disclosed, there were many religious persons who 
found their faith in God shaken by the fact that 
millions of innocent persons could be headed into this vortex of blood 
and destruction without the saving intervention of their Creator. But 
the progress of the war has revealed much, and it has stimulated our 
just historic sense. It shows that the world had become, through the 
initiative of Germany and the following on of the other nations, 
afflicted with the cancer of militarism. God reveals the greatness of 
His power and His omnipotence not by fortuitous and sporadic inter- 
vention, but by the working out of His inexorable law. A cancer if it 
is not to consume the body must be cut out, and the cutting out of it 
necessarily involves suffering and pain in the body. The sacrifices of 
lives and treasure are inevitable in the working out of the cure of the 
world malady. But we must win the war to vindicate this view. 



The Menace of a Premature Peace 13 

We are now able to see the providential punishment and weak- 
ness that follows the violation of moral law. The crass materialism 
of the German philosophy that exalts force above morality, power above 
honor and decency, success above humanity, has blinded the German 
ruling caste to the strength of moral motives that control other peoples, 
and involved them in the fundamental mistakes that will cause their 
downfall. They assumed that England, burdened with Ireland, would 
violate her own obligation and abandon Belgium and would leave her 
ally France to be deprived of all her colonial possessions. They 
assumed that France was decadent, permeated with socialism, and 
unable to make a contest in her state of unpreparedness. They assumed 
that England's colonies, attached only by the lightest tie, and entirely 
independent, if they chose to be, would not sacrifice themselves to 
help the mother land in her struggle. How false the German conclusion 
as to England's national conscience and fighting power, as to France's 
decadence and patriotic fervor and strength, and as to the filial loyalty 
of England's daughters ! 

And now at the crisis of the war, when the victory must abide 
the weight of wealth, resources, food, equipment, and fighting men, 
the German military dynasty, contemptuous of a peace-loving people, 
brings into the contest a nation fresh in its strength, which can furnish 
more money, more food, and more fighting men, if need be, than any 
other nation in the world. 

But we are at a danger point. England and France 
OF THE WAR an( * R uss * a smce 1914 have been fighting the battle 
of the world and fighting for us of America. The 
three years or more of war have drained their vitality, strained their 
credit, exhausted their man-power, subjected many of their non- 
combatants to suffering and destruction, and they have the war weari- 
ness which dulls the earlier eager enthusiasm for the principles at 
stake. Now specious proposals for peace are likely to be most alluring 
to the faint-hearted, and most powerful in the hands of traitors. Russia, 
rid of the Czar, is torn with dissensions, and the extreme socialists and 
impractical theorists, blind to the ultimate destruction of their hopes 
that a loss of this war will entail, are many of them turning for a 
separate peace. 

The intervention of the United States, by her financial aid, has 
helped much; but her armies are needed and she, a republic unprepared, 
must have the time to prepare. The war is now to be determined by 
the active tenacity of purpose of the contestants. England showed that 
tenacity in the wars of Napoleon. Napoleon succumbed. General 



14 The Menace of a Premature Peace 

Grant, in his Memoirs, says that the battle is won not in the first day, 
but by the commander and the army that is ready, even after apparent 
defeat, to begin the next day. It is the side that has the nerve that 
will win. The intervention of the United States has strengthened that 
nerve in England, France and Italy. But delay and disappointment 
give full opportunity to the lethargic, the cowardly, the factious, to 
make the task of the patriot and the loyal men doubly heavy. This is 
the temper of the situation among our European allies. 

With us at home the great body of our people are loyal and 
strong for the war. Of course a people, however- intelligent, when 
very prosperous and comfortable, and not well advised as to the vital 
concern they have in the issue of a war across a wide ocean and 
thousands of miles away, it takes time to convince. But we have, for 
the first time in the history of our republic, begun a war right. We 
have begun with a conscription law which requires service from men 
of a certain age from every walk of life. It is democratic in principle, 
and yet it offers to the Government the means of selection so that 
those who shall be sent to the front may be best fitted to represent the 
nation there, and those best able to do the work in field and factory 
essential to our winning at the front, may be retained. We have 
adopted a merit system of selecting from the intelligent and educated 
youth of the country the company officers of an army of a million and 
a half or two million that we are now preparing. The machinery of 
the draft naturally has creaked some because it had to be so hastily 
constructed, but on the whole it has worked well. Those who devised 
it and have carried it through are entitled to great credit. 

The lessons of the three years of the war are being learned and 
applied in our war equipment and in neutralizing, by new construction, 
the submarine destruction of commercial transports. Adequate 
measures for the raising of the money needed to finance the war and 
finance our Allies, have been carried through Congress or are so near 
enactment as to be practically on the statute book. Food conservation 
is provided for. But of course it takes time for a hundred million of 
peace lovers and non-militarists to get ready, however apt, however 
patriotic, however determined. It is in the period of the year before 
the United States can begin to fight that the strain is to come in 
Europe. But Germany is stopped on the Western and Italian fronts. 
The winter coming will be harder on her than on the Allies 

"It is dogged that does it." Stamp on all proposals of peace as 
ill advised or seditious, and then time will make for our certain 
victory. 



The Menace of a Premature Peace 15 

While there has been pro-German sentiment in the United States, 
and while the paid emissaries of Germany have been busy trying to 
create as much opposition to the war as possible, and have found a 
number of weak dupes and unintelligent persons who don't understand 
the importance of the war, to aid them, our allies should know that 
the whole body of the American people will earnestly support the 
President and Congress in carrying out the measures which have been 
adopted by the United States to win this war. 

PEACE THAT When the war is won ' the United States will wish 
WILL LAST to be heard and will have a right to be heard as to 
the terms of peace. The United States will insist on 
a just peace, not one of material conquest. It is a moral victory the 
world should win. I think I do not mistake the current of public 
sentiment throughout our entire country in saying that our people will 
favor an international agreement by which the peace brought about 
through such blood and suffering and destruction and enormous 
sacrifice shall be preserved by the joint power of the world. Whether 
the terms of the League to Enforce Peace as they are will be taken 
as a basis for agreement, or a modified form, something of the kind 
must be attempted. 

Meantime, let us hope and pray that all the Allies will reject 
proposals for settlement and compromise of every nature ; that they 
will adhere rigidly and religiously to the principle that until a victorious 
result gives security that the world shall not again be drenched in blood 
through the insanely selfish policy of a military caste ruling a deluded 
people intoxicated with material success and power, there will be no 
peace, 



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